THE mother of a baby who suffered life-threatening injuries in her Esher home has said that she begged her boyfriend to tell her what happened to their daughter.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is on trial with the child’s father, both charged with child neglect.

She told Guildford Crown Court on Thursday that she got down on her knees and pleaded with him to reveal how their two-week-old baby sustained 16 fractures to her ribcage, a broken collar bone, a punctured liver and lungs, and bleeding to the brain.

Breaking down in the witness box, the woman recalled how doctors at Kingston Hospital told the couple that their baby’s injuries were not consistent with the father’s story that she had fallen off the bed.

She said: “When the consultant said they needed to know how [she] sustained injuries to be able to save her life... I got down on my knees and I begged him if anything else had happened to tell the doctors now.

“He said ‘no’, nothing else had happened.”

The woman said she did not hurt her daughter after she was born in March 2008.

On Wednesday, the baby’s father told the court her injuries were caused when he accidentally fell on top of her twice in a matter of seconds.

He claimed he covered it up by telling his girlfriend he had placed their baby next to her on the bed while she was asleep, but that their daughter had then fallen off.